FRAMEWORK

AND
ARCHITECTURE
ACTORS AND STAKEHOLDERS
E-Commerce is driven by different groups of actors and
stakeholders.
 First we have persons, abbreviated by “C”, where “C” stands for
(potential) consumers or citizens, according to the specific context,
which is to be considered.
 Secondly we have business organizations, abbreviated by “B”,
where “B” stands for producers and suppliers, trade organizations
or merchants, banks, insurance companies or other financial service
providers, logistics & transportation firms or forwarding agencies
and last but not least several intermediaries (making business with
and on the Internet;
 Thirdly we have governmental authorities, abbreviated by “G” or
“A”, where “A” stands for administration and “G” stands for
Government. This category includes local authorities, e.g. on town
level or on county level, national authorities, e.g. on state level or
on federation level (United states of…), and international
authorities like European Union, United Nations, etc
 We also see political parties, lobby organizations, press and media,
non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) like Greenpeace, Red
Cross or Olympic committee, churches and other religious
organizations, sports and other associations.
 There is no specific abbreviation for this group of stakeholders
FUNDAMENTAL AND SALES
PROCESS
 As we are discussing E-Commerce we have to know in detail what
is going on in E-Commerce transactions. Thus we have to consider
the basic or fundamental sales process. This process describes the
general pattern of making business in delivering goods or providing
services and getting payments for this. Here we can differentiate as
we generally and due to Porter’s value chain do it in process
management between the primary or kernel process and a
secondary or supporting process (Baan 2014, p. 113).
TECHNOLOGICAL ELEMENTS
 In this chapter we will discuss subjects IT people are talking about.
Technology is a major enabler of E-Commerce as we consider it
here. Globally accepted technological standards have been and still
are a prerequisite and a driver of global electronic business. Here
we will follow a technology model with four layers (see figure 4).
This model (Merz 2002, p. 36) is not satisfactory from a scientific
point of view, but it gives a heuristic and pragmaticorientation. The
subsequent short descriptions are mostly taken from Wikipedia.
EXERCISES
 QUESTIONS FOR YOUR SELF-STUDY

Q2.01: Compare the fundamental sales process as it has been shown
here to your daily life and the “traditional” sales process. What is
different? What is new? What is missing?

Q2.02: How much should a business manager know about technical

subjects? What is “need to know”? What is “nice to know”?
EXERCISES
 Q2.03: It refers to describes the general pattern of making business in
delivering goods or providing services and getting payments.
 Q2.04: What are different group of actors and stakeholders?